For if after having escaped the pollutions of the world through [the] knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, again entangled, they are subdued by these, their last state is worse than the first.
This verse is often read as a warning that someone truly saved can be lost again. But this verse sits in a chapter about false teachers, and commentators ask how far a person can escape without any change of heart. (The writers quoted use older translations: "pollutions" where the ESV says "defilements.")
One writer answers with two blunt questions.
Are they Christians at all who are spoken of? Is a dog, or a washed sow, a sheep? Everything depends on who the "they" are. "If, after they have escaped," and so on. If we read the whole chapter, we see clearly that the "they" are "false teachers among you." Jude describes the same people as natural men, who do not have the Spirit… The difference between mere knowledge and saving faith is very important. It does not say they had believed.
The escape described here is real, not pretended.
The spread of scriptural knowledge and gospel light often has an amazing influence on the conduct and character of people who have never known the saving, life-giving, freeing power of the gospel of Christ… Many gross habits may be given up, many "pollutions" laid aside, under the influence of a merely intellectual "knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ," while the heart itself has never really been reached in a saving way. When people shake off the influence of gospel light, they always plunge into greater depths of evil. That is true even when the light never went beyond their outward conduct.
Peter used the same word earlier in the letter, but with a different object.
But now notice the difference, pointed out in this same letter, where there was true faith. He speaks of people for whom that knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord was truly eternal life. He describes them as "having escaped," not the pollutions merely, but "the corruption that is in the world through lust" (chapter 1:4). Here the soul's need had been met by God… The heart is changed with a new nature. New desires and new affections have come in. And there is no proverb that if a sow is turned into a sheep it will go back into the mire.
The pictures Peter uses next — the dog and the washed sow — show how deep the change went.
They escaped the "pollutions of the world," but not the world itself… Reformation can free a man from the world's pollutions. New birth alone can turn us from the world itself. Conversion turns us into sheep. The nature of a sheep is clean. That of a sow is unclean… A sow delights in mud and filth. You may wash its skin, but its nature stays unchanged. So you may reform and make religious the sinner by an external application of the word of God. But if he is not "born again," he will return, in nearly every case, to his former habits.
Commentators differ over whether this verse describes the false teachers themselves or the people they mislead. One writer traces how the promise of liberty does its work.
The false teacher promises him liberty. With his great high-sounding words of vanity he cuts the slight mental leash that held him back. And there he is, back again in the old ways of sin — whether vomit, uncleanness generated from within, or mire, uncleanness from outside.
Why is the last state worse than the first?
By a professed knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, they have escaped the pollutions of the godless world on the outside. But they have no genuine faith in Him personally, so they dare to bring the same pollutions into their religious profession. They are caught in their own net, entangled and overcome. The end of this is necessarily worse than their first condition, for they have added to it the corruption of the pure truth of the grace of God in Christ Jesus.
So who should this passage worry?
Press on everyone the importance of making sure work of it, so that the knowledge of the truth may not merely affect their outward conduct, but reach the heart and give that life which, once possessed, can never be lost. There is nothing in this passage to frighten the sheep of Christ. But there is much to warn those who put on the outward look of sheep for a time, and inwardly have never been anything but the dog and the sow.
- Knowledge — the people here had knowledge of Christ, not faith in Him; the text never says they believed.
- Escape — that knowledge produced a real escape from the world's defilements, but only an outward one.
- Nature — chapter 1 describes a deeper escape, from the corruption inside. Only new birth gives it, and a sheep does not return to the mire.
- Entanglement — false teachers promise liberty and cut the thin restraint that reform had placed on them. The old appetite takes over.
- End — the last state is worse because the old pollutions come back inside a religious profession and corrupt the truth of grace. The sheep of Christ are not in view here.
For it were better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known [it] to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.
Peter has just described teachers who once escaped the world's filth by knowing Christ, only to be trapped in it again. Now he weighs the cost, and one question drives the verse: how can knowing the truth leave someone worse off than never hearing it?
One commentator explains what this way is, and why walking it bears fruit these men never bore.
The way of righteousness is Christ made known in the gospel. But the truth and the life go with the way when a living faith takes it, and fruit of righteousness follows only through Jesus Christ, to God's glory and praise. In these men there was nothing but the soil of fallen nature growing thorns and briers. So the end is all the worse for a beginning of outward training and cleansing.
Peter's word here is knowledge, not faith. The same writer weighs what knowledge is worth, and what Scripture never says about these men.
Even the most accurate knowledge, however desirable, is not the essential thing. The essential thing is faith working by love, and giving our bodies over as servants of righteousness, which leads to holiness. Scripture never states or even hints that these false teachers were born of God. They had professed the name of the One who secures everything good to the one who shares the divine nature — and to that nature they had always been strangers.
So why did they turn back? One writer points to what was missing inside them, and to what they wanted instead.
The holy commandment delivered to them was never mixed with faith in their souls. At last they turned back from it, so that they might do their own will and gratify their evil desires.
The word "holy" is chosen with care. Another writer notes what it stands against.
In the early part of the chapter the subject was the godly and the ungodly. Here the subject is the holy commandment, set against what these evil teachers tried to bring in, and did bring in.
Why should knowing make things worse? Because light comes with responsibility attached.
Whatever measure of light men may have through the goodness of God, they are to be faithful to that light. The measure of that light is the measure of their responsibility on the day when they must give account to God… Men may have the truth, and boast about having it. But if their conduct denies it, then it would be better for them not to have "known the way of righteousness." The higher their privileges have lifted them, the more terrible their fall will be.
There is a second reason the end is worse than the beginning. These men did not fall back in private. They carried the old filth into their religion.
By a claimed knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, they have escaped the pollutions of the godless world on the outside. But they have no real faith in Him personally, so they dare to bring those same pollutions into their religious profession. They are caught in their own net, tangled up and overcome. The end of this is bound to be worse than their first condition, for they have added to it the corruption of the pure truth of the grace of God in Christ Jesus.
Many readers hear this verse as a threat to their own security. Everything turns on who "they" are.
It is not what I say, but what does it say? Are the people spoken of Christians at all? … Everything depends on who the "they" are. "If, after they have escaped," and so on. Read the whole chapter, and we see clearly that the "they" are "false teachers among you." … It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness. The difference between mere knowledge and saving faith is very important. It does not say they had believed.
- Way. The way of righteousness is Christ made known in the gospel. Living faith walks it, and only then does fruit follow.
- Knowledge. Accurate knowledge is not the essential thing. Faith working by love is. These teachers had the first without the second.
- Commandment. They received the holy commandment but never mixed it with faith. In the end they turned back from it to do their own will.
- Weight. The light people receive sets the measure of their responsibility. The higher the privilege, the harder the fall.
- Reality. Peter never says they believed. The warning targets profession without life, not the security of a believer.
But that [word] of the true proverb has happened to them [The] dog [has] turned back to his own vomit; and, [The] washed sow to [her] rolling in mud.
Peter closes the chapter with a proverb about a dog and a sow — people who seem to leave sin, then run back to it. Does this describe a Christian who lost salvation, or someone who was never changed at all?
Peter calls it "the true proverb." One writer shows where the first half comes from, and why Peter's use of it cuts deeper.
What picture could show disgusting impurity better than "The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire"? We hear of the dog returning like this in Proverbs 26:11, where it describes the fool returning to his folly. It says this even more strongly of the man who once knew clearly the good news of Christ and the truth of God in a general way. The better the knowledge, the worse it is if corruption follows.
The dog and the sow are not the same picture twice. One goes back to what came out of it; the other goes back to what surrounds it.
Such is dog nature that it has the unpleasant habit of returning to its own vomit. Such is sow nature that however well washed it loves the mire and plunges into it at the first opportunity. A person may have an enlightened mind and reformed outward actions. But without that basic change of nature which the new birth produces, he falls an easy victim. The false teacher promises him liberty. With his great high-sounding empty words he cuts the slight mental leash that held him back. And there he is, back again in the old ways of sin — whether vomit (uncleanness generated from within) or mire (uncleanness from outside).
Notice what Peter says about the sow: she was washed. Something real happened to her outside. Nothing happened to her inside.
Who vomited? The dog. And who went back to the vomit? The dog. It was a dog all the time, never a clean animal. The sow was washed, but she was still a sow — only washed, never made a clean animal, never anything but a sow, not a sheep. You cannot wash a sow into a sheep. Before the washing she was a dirty sow. After the washing she was a clean sow, as long as some outside restraint held her back, such as a rope. She soon gnawed through that rope or broke it, and back she went to wallow in the mire, because she was still a sow. Her nature was unchanged.
The same warning hits religious respectability in every age. Some people treat church membership as a cover for a life that never changed.
A lady in Florida told me the other day that a man could do anything he liked. Drunkenness, immorality — anything, as long as he belonged to a church. That whitewashes him. But remember: to whitewash is not to wash white. People whitewashed the tombs of the dead, and in a moral sense they whitewash people today. Only the blood of Jesus washes white — yes, whiter than snow.
The whole meaning turns on who these people are. Read the chapter from the start and there is no doubt.
Are the people spoken of here Christians at all? Is a dog, or a washed sow, a sheep? Everything depends on who the "they" are. If we read the whole chapter, we see clearly that the "they" are "false teachers among you." What a picture of every feature of false teachers, from that day to this. The difference between mere knowledge and saving faith is very important. It does not say they had believed.
Believers do stumble. But Scripture never puts a stumbling believer among these two animals. It uses a different picture for him.
The point of the picture is that the sow has an unclean nature and delights in the mire. You never saw a sheep wallowing in the mire. You may have seen a poor sheep fall into a ditch and bleat to be taken out. That is the case of a backslider. But a child of God is never called a dog or a sow. The people Peter speaks of had never been born again. They had never received a new life or nature — they had only been reformed on the outside.
- Nature. The dog goes back because it is a dog; the sow goes back because she is a sow. Behaviour follows nature, and nothing here changed the nature.
- Washing. The sow was washed — clean on the outside, improved in morals, respectable in religion. To whitewash is not to wash white.
- Restraint. What held the sow was a rope, not a new heart. False teachers cut that leash with promises of freedom, and the old life resumes.
- Knowledge. These people knew the good news, but they never believed. The better the knowledge, the worse the ruin that follows.
- Sheep. Peter's "they" are the false teachers, not the flock. A believer who falls is a sheep in a ditch, crying to be lifted out — never an animal happy in the mud.